


peace

by justletmeadoreyou



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Canon Universe, Fluff and Angst, Force Bond (Star Wars), Happy Ending, Mutual Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-28
Updated: 2020-09-28
Packaged: 2021-03-07 18:21:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,167
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26692102
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/justletmeadoreyou/pseuds/justletmeadoreyou
Summary: Kylo Ren and Rey are pulled together by the Force, united through their bond, and extremely angry and awkward on opposite sides of a galactic war. As they fall apart together, could they ever bring each other peace?Inspired by "peace" by Taylor Swift.*404 TRoS not found
Relationships: Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 1
Kudos: 7





	peace

**Author's Note:**

> Ever since Taylor Swift dropped "folklore", I've felt like "peace" was the soundtrack of Ben and Rey's love story. For this fic, I intend to use short verses of the song as themes for each chapter. Hopefully it doesn't go totally off the rails. 
> 
> Warning: I am in the midst of applying to law school so I promise nothing in terms of a posting schedule. I just want these two lovebirds out of my head and into the world. 
> 
> xoxo  
> b

**_“Our coming-of-age has come and gone_ **

**_Suddenly this summer, it's clear”_ **

Since slamming the bond in Kylo Ren’s face on Crait, there was a low thrumming that sat in the back of her mind. She knew that it was him; his anger, his despair, his arresting loneliness. It was a hollow cousin to the crack she felt after denying him on Crait. 

_ “Please.” _ She could nearly see the apparition of Ben Solo in his eyes, feel the lost boy in his plea. That Ben, not Kylo, had asked her to join him, to guide him, and let Kylo believe it was his idea. Kylo wanted Rey as his Empress, while Ben really wanted…What? 

A friend? An ally? A lover?

But Ben wasn’t in control when the scene fell apart. As Kylo realized Rey was going to run from him, something in his very soul shifted. What had been a pond of resolution and certainly erupted into a tsunami of grief. Ben shrunk back into his insecurities, hating himself even more for thinking Rey would want him. And Kylo.. Well, Kylo was furious for being denied. When he entered Snoke’s throne room, he  _ knew _ he would be leaving as Supreme Ruler, with a formidable Empress at his side. He and Rey were going to lay waste to old worlds together, and raise new ones in their place. 

He saw that, without her, he would have to take over the First Order, instead of destroying it like the outdated relic that it was. He hated her for once again trapping him in the belly of this antiquated war machine, abandoning him just like the others. 

Rey sighed, staring into the streaked and clouded mirror of her Resistance quarters on Ajan Kloss. Her hair was in the usual buns, and she was dressed in her typical light tunic and leggings. But her face had changed. She looked like a woman haunted. Her eyes seemed to dull the sunlight, not reflect it as they once had. Her freckles were dimmed by her constant stints indoors and in space. The low frequency of his pain at the back of her mind kept her up, distracted her, made it hard to hold on to conversations long enough to find diversion. She didn’t really smile anymore. 

What would he think, if he could see her now? 

She hated that she cared what a monster thought of her physical appearance. A piece of her needed him to recoil at the sight of her greyed skin and purpled under eyes, killing the desire that rose in his core when he peered into her escape pod on the Supremacy _. I’m not yours  _ \- she thought-  _ Never yours.  _

But buried beneath her hate was her most shameful secret. Tucked into the deepest recesses of her conscious, she wanted the Supreme Leader to want her. She wanted him to gaze at her in awe and deference. To hurt him with the fact that he had to kill something he coveted. 

This need to be desired was foreign to Rey. On Jakku, being desirable was a slow kind of death sentence and Rey worked to stay as hidden as possible. She didn’t socialize, or try to find other scavengers to align herself with. Other people, men especially, were more trouble than they were worth. She had never felt any kind of attraction to any of the other junkers or wayward souls passing through Niima Outpost. Her life was one of survival, with little room for anything other than the small collection of treasures huddled in her AT-AT and the occasional day dream. 

But with Kylo Ren, she felt something she could not quite put a name to. A deep longing and also, maybe, fear? She wanted him close, close enough to really see her. And she also wanted to fling him into the next solar system and wrap her vulnerabilities in her strongest defenses. But she knew she wanted him to look at her and think, to her never ending mortification, that she was  _ pretty. _ Rey knew she wasn’t beautiful, and was certain that paradigms of feminine charm and grace were offered to the Supreme Leader of the First Order on a daily basis. She knew she wasn’t going to out-sex appeal any of the women Kylo Ren could have. But still, she hoped, and she detested herself for it. 

Staring into the mirror, fingers raised to her temples to relieve the pressure in her skull, Rey tried to think past the pounding. She couldn’t be sure, but she theorized that perhaps the pressure ebbed and flowed with his mood swings. He also either never slept or didn’t find serenity in his dreams, because the ache would flutter and peak throughout the night. No matter what she had done, it simply wouldn’t end, and she needed it to end. 

This complicated attachment to Kylo Ren actually made Rey pine her solitary life in the desert. For Rey, life on Jakku had been a kind of perpetual, grueling summer. Her daily routine was always the same. Wake up, scavenge, keep her head down, and hope. In her AT-AT, she had felt on the brink of something; her family returning, leaving to find a new home, inviting others into her life. But now, hunched into herself in her barren quarters, she felt like she had been plunged into an icy winter, chilled to the bone by this man's pain and fury. 

What gutted Rey the most was that, unlike Ren, she did have to feel lonely. She was surrounded by love. Rey thought of Finn and Rose laughing in the caf, and early morning lessons in the jungle with Leia. How the Resistance base hummed with young idealists who believed in her use of the Force. She even called on memories of Luke, and of her very little time with Han. Once, all of these things would have brought her closer to the Light. But now, they couldn’t warm her the way they once had. And  _ he... _ he had taken that from her, just like he destroyed everything in his wake. 

He had called her a “girl” so many times, and maybe he was foolish enough to actually think her weak and naive. But she was not a kid anymore. The events of the last month had been a coming of age at warp-speed. She had loved and lost so much, had gone from playing make believe in a war hero’s helmet to a warrior herself. She would not continue to let him ruin her like this. She was the Last Jedi, the fire that fed the Resistance. 

She was going to end her own suffering. But, she needed to see him to do it. Rey straightened her back, and hardened her resolve. Eyes piercing with determination, and lips pressed into a defiant line, Rey threw open the door that held back the flood that was Kylo Ren. He instantly overwhelmed her like one of the deadly sand storms on Jakku. 

“Scavenger.” 


End file.
